Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
04-02-2026
WASHINGTON/ NEW DELHI: United States President Donald Trump claims India will now buy Venezuelan oil after tussles last year over the South Asian country’s significant imports of Russian crude.
“India is coming in, and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil as opposed to buying it from Iran. So, we’ve already made that deal, the concept of the deal,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday.
India has not been importing significant amounts of Iranian oil owing to US sanctions that have squeezed exports, but turned to Russia for supplies after Western penalties over the Ukraine war drove down the cost of crude.
The US president, who has said his country intends to control Venezuela’s oil sales and revenues indefinitely after abducting former leader Nicolas Maduro last month, had put pressure on India to stop buying Russian oil.
Back in August, amid efforts to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump had doubled tariffs on Indian exports to the US to 50 percent to discourage New Delhi from buying Russian oil.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signalled in January that the additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods could be removed, given what he called a sharp reduction in Indian imports of Russian oil.
In March, as tensions spiked with Maduro’s administration in Venezuela, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on countries buying Venezuelan oil, and last year threatened to impose the same tariff on India.
The US government this week lifted some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry to make it easier for US companies to sell its crude oil.
A White House official said the measure “would help flow existing product” from Venezuela and that there will soon be more announcements on the easing of sanctions.
Trump’s comments on Saturday appeared to reflect continued improvement in US-India relations, which have been tense throughout the past year.
Trump also said China could make a deal with the US to buy Venezuelan oil.
Earlier, India plans to continue buying cheap crude oil from Russia, despite sanctions imposed on major Russian oil companies by the United States and Europe.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Russia-India annual bilateral summit in New Delhi last week, during which Putin said: “Russia is ready for uninterrupted shipments of fuel to India.”
India is the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China and is facing intense pressure from the US to stop buying it. Earlier this year, the administration of US President Donald Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent, in part because of this issue, Trump said at the time.
Here is what we know about India’s imports of Russian oil, and how New Delhi has managed to keep its petroleum purchases from Moscow afloat in spite of sanctions and pressure.
In 2021, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian oil constituted around 2.5 percent of India’s total oil imports, according to figures from the US Energy Information Administration published in February this year.
After the war began, Europe and the US began placing sanctions on Russian companies to economically isolate Moscow.
Overall, since the beginning of the war, the US and its allies have imposed more than 21,000 sanctions on Russia, targeting individuals, media organizations, the military, and sectors that include energy, aviation, shipbuilding and telecommunications. (Int’l News Desk)
